Day 5, good Morning from Lander Wyoming

Good Morning from Lander Pedigree® Stage Stop Race Fans. It is 6 a.m. and Mushers have already been busy caring for their teams for a while. With the amount of driving needed from and to the trailheads, these are truly long days. Not quite the same as Distance Mushing and sleeping out on the trail, yet this is far from a relaxed pace.

A good handler crew is a must on this race. Ideally they are also mechanically inclined, as breakdowns are poised to happen. It is nice to see how well this group of Mushers is working together in that case. Rachel Courtney  is having some vehicle issues and Linda Pierc’s Crew and the Streeper’s have stepped up to the plate to help Rachel to get to todays starting line. Luckily tomorrow is an ” off – travel ” day, which hopefully give the mechanics enought time to get her rig back on the road.

Day 5 in Lander sets up to be great conditions. It is 5F above this morning and up on the South Pass temperatures are likely a little bit higher with temperature inversion.  Last nights Meet and Greet in downtown Lander was a huge success. Locals and Mushers mingled, and specially the kids were eager to ask questions about the race and dogs. My ride for the week has been Freemont Landers Courtesy Shuttle, and I am very thankful for that!

Lina Streeper will go out with the Yellow Bib today. Anny Malo has her work cut out, to stay ahead of the strong Streeper team. A 5 minute lead can evaporate quickly. Also for the 1st time Allen Berge will not be the 1st team out, that will be Ben Barrett from Vermont, who had the slowest runtime. JR Anderson put in a very strong performance yesterday. He will start much further to the back than he has been in the previous runs. From looking at the past races stats he seems to have a pattern of finishing strong in the later part of the Pedigree Stage Stop Race.

We MIGHT have decent enough cell coverage up at the race site, to do a live stream on Facebook. Stay tuned. If that will happen, I will try to start it at 9 a.m. with the 1st team leaving the chute! It’s RACETIME!